An Ecuadorian Adventure

last hour in ecuador

noreply@blogger.com (Emilee) — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 14:42:00 +0000

I'm in the airport in Guayaquil waiting for my flight to Miami to board so this is my last post from Ecuador. As silly as it sounds, I miss Loja already, but as always, I am really excited to be home tonight and to see my family and my cats and my friends. I've had a great time here overall and I'm really going to miss the experience, but now it's on to bigger and hopefully better things.

I'm not excited in the least for the next 12 hours of air travel. Yesterday morning, my flight from Loja to Guayaquil was almost ridiculous. The plane was tiny, maximum capacity 30 people.... It had legit propellers and bounced all over the place in the air. Thank goodness it was only a 40 minute flight because I was dying of motion sickness. Bigger planes are less of a problem.

Yesterday after arriving in Guayaquil, I was greeted by a girl I used to work with at Canadian and her boyfriend. They went with my by taxi to my hostel and then we went out to breakfast and walked around the Malecon 2000 which is Guayaquil's boardwalk on the rio Guayas. The city of Guayaquil is gigantic and kind of dirty / intimidating, but the Malecon is beautiful and safe. There were armed guards all over it. My hostel was fine, lots of stairs, but thank goodness this is a patriarchal society and I didn't carry my luggage up or down them. After my former colleague and her boyfriend went home, I walked around the Malecon some more, went to the Iguana park and the Parque Cenentario and at some lunch. I was exhausted after sleeping only 3 hours the night before and walking around all morning and up and down 430 some stairs to get a good view of the city so I went back to my hostel around 5 and watched some tv and fell asleep. I woke up around 10, too late to go out because Guayaquil is dangerous after dark so I went back to sleep and slept on and off until 6 o'clock this morning. I definitely needed all that sleep and I feel perfectly fine now so I'm glad.

Well, just wanted to post one more time before my adventure is over. Life in general is an adventure, but Ecuador has been my greatest journey so far. :)

leaving loja in less than 2 days

noreply@blogger.com (Emilee) — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 15:23:00 +0000

Packing to go home is much easier than packing to leave home. Mainly because I had to decide what I wanted to bring with me when I left home 5 months ago and now that I'm packing again, I just have to put all of my stuff back into my suitcases and leave behind whatever I don't want, mainly a lot of my clothes.

It's hard to believe that I'm starting my journey home on Tuesday. I am still slightly nervous about being in Guayaquil all day on Tuesday because it is a huge city and supposedly pretty dangerous, though most sources say it's really only dangerous at night. I am sure I can manage to do a bunch of touristy stuff during the day. Apparently there is a park in Guayaquil where the trees and the park itself really is filled with wild iguanas. Now I know iguanas are herbivores, but I am not sure if I'll be able to force myself to see the park. Surely it would be interesting, but considering I have a severe phobia of frogs, iguanas really aren't that appealing to me. ew. But there is also a boardwalk named Malecon 2000 downtown on the River Guayas and an artsy neighborhood with tons of colorful houses called Cerro Santa Ana that I'd like to see. So there are ways to pass the time.

I am not sure why, but I am nervous about actually getting out of Ecuador and to Milwaukee just in terms of getting through customs (in a timely fashion) because I've never had to do anything like that before and I read that in Miami, where I'll be entering the country, everyone's bags get opened and searched and then you have to recheck your luggage.

All in all, I'm ready to go home. I will miss Loja beause it is a beautiful place, but home is where your heart is.

I'll also miss this little guy. He's been a great surrogate cat.

10, almost 9

noreply@blogger.com (Emilee) — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 01:55:00 +0000

I'm going home so soon. Just today I started to get a little sad about leaving here, like so sad that I was thinking maybe I should stay, but then I think about it a little more and then I'm ready to go home again.

Things have been going well lately. My birthday was fine, definitely relaxing. I got a tattoo that I'm not in love with yet which is a total bummer. But I am planning to get it fixed / more added to it when I go home. It'll be a good souvenir regardless.

I've been looking online for recipes for ecuadorian food I can make when I get home so I'm pretty excited to be able to prepare some ecuadorian food for my family.

Tomorrow starts the last week of classes for me. It's the last weeks of the cycle and I think it'll be the most stressful week of the whole course because of final exams, presentations, etc etc. Hopefully it isn't too awful. I would like my last week here to be enjoyable.

I'm leaving Loja on the 29th and then if my flight out of here isn't cancelled, I will be staying in Guayaquil for a day/night and flying out of Guayaquil, through Miami, Chicago, and land in Milwaukee late on the 30th. Flights to Guayaquil from Loja lately have been cancelled for some reason so I need to go to the travel agency that I purchased the ticket from tomorrow to see if they can find out why the flights are cancelled and what the likelihood of mine being cancelled is because there is only one flight to guayaquil a day and if my flight is cancelled, i'll have to take the 45 min trip back to Loja and then get on a bus ASAP to Guayaquil to make the 10 hour ride there rather than the 45 minute flight...... ugh. I hope it doesn't come to that. One way or another, I am getting home on June 30th!

:)

almost 24

noreply@blogger.com (Emilee) — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 22:08:00 +0000

Since I´ve been patiently counting down to June 29/30, time has been flying by. My countdown calander has almost two weeks crossed off on it. The other night I was unable to fall asleep worrying about whether I will make it home or not. I know everything will be fine, but I´m worried.

Tomorrow is my birthday and I have an appointment at 11AM to get a tattoo. Hopefully the artist shows up. He missed an appointment that one of my roommates had with him a few Sundays ago because of a family emergency so hopefully he doesn´t have to leave the country again this weekend. In recent years, I have never really thought much about my birthday until the actual day. I don´t love being the center of attention so I am pretty lax in planning anything. Last year I had a party, which was nice, but this year I´m in Ecuador and I´ll be going out to dinner tonight and then to a bar to see a Queen tribute band perform. I´m sure it´ll be fun, but I don´t even love Queen so we´ll see how it turns out. Surely it´ll be entertaining at least. Tomorrow I plan to get my tattoo and then probably sit around the rest of the day. As I have probably mentioned, Sundays in Loja are incredibly boring and not many businesses are open so almost every Sunday is a lazy Sunday.

I just ate the best chicken empanada ever at Tamal Lojano. Just writing that so that when I look back on this, I don´t forget.

Til next time.

faltan tres semanas

noreply@blogger.com (Emilee) — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 00:56:00 +0000

Oy vey, it´s been a while. We haven´t had an internet connection in our apartment for a few days so that is why I haven´t posted. Things are going well. I have three (THREE!) weeks left here and I´m getting pretty excited about going home. The more I think about it though, I might miss Ecuador. Not so much my apartment, the rain, or weirdly cut pieces of chicken, but the mountains, my students, and speaking in Spanish all the time.

It´s been pretty chilly here lately and I find it kind of funny when my students come to class and complain about how they are freezing and then rub their hands together for heat. I tell them frankly to put on a sweater and quit complaining because they don´t understand what being so cold that you could be freezing means. 68 degrees is definitely not freezing. It´s lovely.

School is starting to wind down, but not in the sense of winding down. My two older classes have one test next week for two days, then three days of review, and then a cummulative final. My other two classes aren´t so bad, but my junior tweens have really been getting on my nerves lately. Kids who used to be so well-behaved are turning into little demons constantly begging me to go outside to play soccer. Seriously, what´s the deal? We have class for 50 minutes a day and they can´t handle not being able to play soccer in that time. It´s pretty annoying. They also steal my water bottle and demand that I let them drink from it, steal my teacher´s book to see the answer to the work book exercises and throw paper at me occassionally. After calling someone in to discipline the class several times, I have opted to leave the door open during our lesson because my room is across from the secretary´s desk where the school inspector is usually working. Thankfully, these kids fear the inspector or I would have run out of ideas long ago. I break up at least one fight a day in that class. Ugh. My kids class is still driving me crazy on a daily basis. They are super cute, but don´t let that fool you. They eat candy before class. They are constantly in competition with each other in terms of finishing activities, they scream, run at me and erase anything I write on the whiteboard, and ask if it´s time for class to end 35 minutes before class ends.

I do really enjoy teaching English, but it´ll be nice to have a break from it and decide if it´s really what I want to do or if I do actually want to go to culinary school and open up a bakery/cafe. Great idea, no? I think so.

Well I am starving so it´s time to go home and make some pasta bolognese. Yum.... it´s a staple here (for me and Annabel)

si ves

noreply@blogger.com (Emilee) — Mon, 31 May 2010 13:24:00 +0000

Loja is boring. Usually anyway. But occasionally, we find something to do. This past weekend, I went to the botanical gardens on the very south side of the city, which was interesting. There were some cool plants there, but mostly it was just something to do on an otherwise boring day. Life is so boring without TV. I realize that's completely ridiculous to say, but it's true. Try to go 5 months without watching TV and tell me what you think. I suppose it depends where you live though definitely because if you lived in a booming metropolis, there would be tons of stuff to do on weekends. On the other hand, if you live in Loja, you'd feel differently.

I'm coming home in 30 days. I am really happy about that because I have had it up to *here* with the bed in my bedroom. It's probably the most uncomfortable bed ever.... It seems that most beds here, unless you're richy rich, have a frame, and boards that fit on the frame, and a foam mattress that's about three inches thick. Because the mattress is foam, it gets flat and stays that way, so honestly, the part of the mattress that I sleep on it maybe a half inch thick...so I wake up with a sore back and if I sleep on my side if feels like I have bruises in the morning. Awesome, I know. So I can't wait to get home for that reason, among others, but I'm pretty glad about leaving this horrible bed behind.

I would have liked to travel more while in Ecuador. I may still go to Quito before I leave, but I guess it would have been nice to see more of Ecuador and even other countries. However, traveling on a 4 dollar an hour salary is pretty much out of the question and the school I work at requires that if you want to take a vacation, you have to get someone to cover all your classes. Soooooo.... yeah. Some day I will come back to South America so I can see Macchu Pichu, Iguazu Falls, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Patagonia, and the Galapagos Islands (when I'm super rich. ha!) Plus, traveling in Ecuador requires that you sit on a bus for long periods of time and I've always hated buses so I just don't want to travel to avoid a several hour bus ride. The ride to Quito is 14 hours, and I think I might do it just because I want to see Quito for sure and stand on the equator. Plus, I've heard that if you take a night bus, it's not so bad. We'll see about that.

I have four weeks left of classes. I think I'm really going to miss some of my students. Of course, they are not even close to me age-wise, but I've become attached to some of my junior tweens, tweens, and teens. They're pretty awesome people and I wish I could stay here to see how much they change and how much more English they learn as they grow older, but alas, I won't be doing that so I'll just enjoy the last weeks classes I have with all of them.

Hope everyone reading this is well! See you in a month, USA.

PS. here are couple pictures from at the botanical gardens. gigantic leaves, fake swinging and real swinging from vines, and a bonsai garden. Click on them to enlarge.

fireworks are cool. anywhere.

noreply@blogger.com (Emilee) — Fri, 21 May 2010 03:04:00 +0000

Tonight after class, Annabel and I went out to dinner at El Sendero, which we go to abouuuut once a week. As in, the people who voluntarily work there recognize us when we come in and we often see people we recognize when we go. It's a restaurant owned by American missionaries so the food is pretty good, pretty home-y, and it's very well....American. They have hamburgers, tacos, burritos, quesadillas, chicken wraps, cappucinos, mochas, sandwiches etc etc. Yes, several Mexican menu items, but the food is hardly Mexican and is very delicious. And their limonada so good. Anyway, usually when we go, I get papas y carne which consists of what the restaurant call "rustic potatoes", which are little cubes of roasted potatoes, a hamburger patty, a small salad of lettuce, tomato, and vinegarette, and a sunny side up fried egg. 1) before coming here, I hated fried eggs. Now, I eat them about 4 to 5 times a week for breakfast. 2) Papas y carne, in every other restaurant is called papi carne, and in every other restaurant I've tried it, is not as good. 3) I will be making papas y carne when I get home because it, along with hamburgers (moreso burgers), as bad as that is, has become kind of a staple for us foreigners here.

After dinner, we went across the street to the plaza of San Sebastian because as we were eating I noticed people were walking past carrying cellos in cases so I was curious. There was a concert set up outside in the square. I think it was the Loja Symphony Orchestra. Pretty cool. We didn't stay for the whole concert because after a couple pieces, there were people singing with the orchestra, which I don't love sooooo we left. But the music was cool, very Latin American, which was weird for me to hear especially because I grew up playing the cello and playing and hearing primarily classical pieces...never once something you could salsa to. Regardless, it was cool.

Then after we stopped at a pharmacy and I picked up some ivy extract syrup to suppress my what seems to be neverending cough slash sickness in general, we went home. And let me tell you, it is convenient to have a 5th floor bedroom with a wall of windows because I just watched a 15 minute fireworks display while sitting on my bed. I'm assuming the fireworks started after the concert ended. It was pretty cool. I kind of felt like it was the 4th of July and then I got excited that I will be home by the 4th of July this year. Fireworks are pretty spectacular wherever you see them, don't you think? I'd post some pictures that I took, but I think we all pretty much understand what a fireworks display looks like.

By the way, thanks to the people who have either commented here or mentioned that they read my blog. I appreciate it.

Thank goodness tomorrow is Friday AND we don't have class on Monday because it 's the 24th of May which is a national holiday celebrating the Battle of Pinchincha. Our favorite pizza place is on the street called 24 (veinticuartro) de Mayo. I'll look up some information on the Batalla de Pinchincha on Monday when I'm bored to learn more about the holiday. I'm realizing that even though I majored in Latin American, Caribbean, and Iberian Studies, I know next to nothing about Ecuadorian history. Speaking of that, two days ago my teen students asked what I studied in college and I explained that I double majored in Spanish and the aforementioned six-word major and their prompt response was, of course in Spanish, "So.... what can you do with that major?" Typical. My response was "Anything I want to do." ....I should have listened to my sister when she told me to pick a more practical major. If only we could all go back and change our lives. Oh well, I'm here now. Living in the moment and trying to enjoy it as much as I can. I'm glad to be able to speak and understand Spanish so well. I hardly remember anything now about the culture, history, or politics of hispanic countries, but whatever man. Enough with the stream-of-consciousness writing.

It'll be a slightly boring weekend surely because I am sick so I don't want to travel and now Annabel is sick too, same cold surely. eeeeeeeeeyuck!

dead or dying

noreply@blogger.com (Emilee) — Sun, 16 May 2010 22:04:00 +0000

Wow, it's been a while since I've written anything in here. Mainly because I'm convinced that barely anyone reads it and partly because there's never really much to write except silly stories about my various students or trips to local stores or restaurants. Speaking of restaurants... Annabel, Lainey, and I stumbled upon this AMAZING restaurat yesterday called Mar Roja. They have mostly seafood and also some chicken and steak dishes. I had breaded corvina and it was seriously one of the top three fish dishes I've ever had in my life. SO GOOD! Lainey had a kind of soup/stew with shrimp in it. I tasted a bit of it and the shrimp seemed so fresh I felt like I was eating straight out of whatever body of water it came from. Anyway, yes, it was fantastic. We always complain about how Loja really lacks in terms of dining options. We always go to the same maybe 4 or 5 places so it is always a treat to find a new place.

The weather is so unpredictable here, which I may have said already. For a couple weeks it will rain every day, then be sunny a couple days, then rainy again. It's been sunny here since Wednesday and even though winter was supposed to have started at the beginning of may, it is HOT here when it's sunny. I guess I'm not complaining because I hate rain, but because I'm from Wisconsin, I always wish it was a little bit cooler here during the day.

Teaching is still going fine, though I'm pretty sure that if I ever have children, I will be paying someone to take them off my hands from the age of 6 through 8. Nine years old or more, fine, but earlier, I can't take it. Is taking care of small children as hard as being their English teacher? It's like I have an hour a day of sheer torture. Those little brats are malicious. Some of them, of course, aren't bad. And they are all cute when they're sitting still and listening to you teach the differences between prepositions of place such as next to, between, and in front of. But the second you turn your back, forget it. Oh well, I think I can handle six more weeks of those little buggers. Have I mentioned how much I LOVE my teen class. My students are AWESOME. They are hilarious, they respect me, and just in general have really fantastic personalities. They asked me the other day how to say "I will miss you" and "I miss you" in terms of me leaving at the end of June. I will really miss those kids. I am still angry that I'm five and a half years older than the oldest student in that class because I wish that either I was younger or they were older so we could hang out outside of class. Oh wellllllllllllll.

I'll be home in 44 days. June 30th. I like Ecuador, but every day I feel a little more ready to go home. Most of that excitement has to do with the apartment I live in. The place is a pig sty, made exponentially worse by the fact that the men working in other parts of the building sawing tiles and wall apart send their dust into our apartment. There is literally a layer of dust on everything in the living room, kitchen, and guest bathroom. When I open my bedroom door in the morning to go make breakfast, the whole apartment is cloudy with dust. It's the dust, and the fact that my roommate's cat has (well, had) fleas. Thankfully, after she had him neutered, she got him so flea medication so the fleas are no longer on him, but they are all around our apartment. There were seemingly hundreds in my room. They are tiny, but you can feel when they are on you because their bite stings. And they are hard to kill by just squeezing them between your fingers. I bought some flea killing RAID insecticide spray today and since I sprayed every square inch of my bedroom, bedding, and bathroom earlier this afternoon, the only fleas I've seen are the ones that are dead or dying on my bathroom floor. None whatsoever on my bed, thank goodness! Fleas are gross and because I knew they were crawling around my room, I constantly felt itchy when I was in here.

I am grateful for lazy Sundays.

Hope you are all doing well!

Vilcabamba

noreply@blogger.com (Emilee) — Mon, 03 May 2010 15:36:00 +0000

This weekend, I went to Vilcabamba with some fellow teachers. Vilcabamba is a hazardus 45 minute drive through the mountains from Loja. It's a tiny town of only 4,000 people and only one main square, but the hostel we stayed at, Hosteria Izcayluma is outside the city and is pretty much a jungle sanctuary. It was such a beautiful place. There was tons of flora and awesome views since the hostel is on a mountain outside of the valley. So beautiful. Hammocks all over, a lagoon style pool, a covered outdoor restaurant where I ate stroganoff with chicken and homemade pasta. The hostel is owned by two german brothers I guess. They have their own bar and pool and ping pong and a giant chess set. It was pretty cool. I would have liked to stay longer, but we only went from Saturday morning to Sunday afternoon since we all have to work today. We had lunch at a Mexican restaurant in Vilcabamba on Sunday. Even though it was Sunday, most places in town were open and people were walking around everywhere. Vilcabamba is pretty famous because it is known as the valley of longevity because people supposedly live to be 140 years old there. Of course, it's not true, but the bottled water there advertises longevity as do some of the businesses, like the ice cream shop across the street from the restaurant we ate at. Ice cream of longevity. If only... haha.

Anyway, it was a great trip. I have some bug bites that itch like crazy, but it could certainly be worse.

Here is a link to my pictures on google in case you don't have facebook. Vilcabamba All the flower pictures are mostly for my mom and grandpa to see because I'm sure they will love them. The flowers are all from the grounds of the hotel.

a week later

noreply@blogger.com (Emilee) — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 02:46:00 +0000

This post is dedicated to my grandpa who as I was told, checks my blog every night. Sorry I never post anything, Grampy!

I'm sick again. I have a cold. Nothing extreme, but I guess working in a school in a foreign country is slowly killing me.... At least during this illness, I can stand up and am able to walk so it could be worse.

We still don't have consistent running water. Let me tell you right now, people, like you, I previously took my seemingly neverending supply of running water for granted. When the water comes on now, I was my hands, brush my teeth, etc as quickly as possibly because in a matter of seconds it could be gone. Thankfully, I was able to shower today. Pouring cold bottles of water over each others' heads to wash our hair leaves something to be desired, and by that I mean, a hot shower.

Apparently May is the beginning of winter in Loja. I have noticed that it is getting a little cooler lately and raining a lot more than normal so that must be winter.... slightly cooler, not so sunny, and quite a bit more rainy than normal. Weirdly, I do miss cold weather, but even more weird is that at night when it's below 70 degrees, I shiver and have to put on a sweatshirt. Ay!

Things are okay here. I'm accustomed to being ill most of the time. However, I am pretty excited about going home in two months where I won't be sick all the time *knock on wood*.

Sorry I don't have anything exciting or super happy to report on, but working is the same as it always is.

oy vey.

noreply@blogger.com (Emilee) — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 15:43:00 +0000

Let me tell you, being without running water, even for only 3 hours every night SUCKS. but at always, it could be worse.

I will probably be home before July 4th.

If you don´t have pictures and want to see pictures from my mini-vacation to Cuenca a couple weeks ago, click here.

Happy EARTH DAY!

joint pain, no sleep, hospitals, oh my.

noreply@blogger.com (Emilee) — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 17:09:00 +0000

The university hospital in Loja is pretty nice. I know that from my visit with an internal medicine doctor last friday. I was sore on Thursday, couldn´t fall asleep on Thursday night because my joints hurt, cried a lot, eventually woke up on Friday and from all of the pain I was practically unable to move at all. I got out of bed successfully on the fifth try, walked like a zombie to my bedroom door, yelled for my roommates help, went to the hospital, saw a doctor, had an xray of my hands done and blood drawn, was diagnosed with unspecified rheumatoid arthritis, received a prescription for non-FDA approved arthritis medicine, got home, and stayed in bed for a day and a half. I started feeling better on Saturday afternoon. I was able to put pressure on my wrists a little, could move enough to take a shower, and walk down the stairs without crying. Thankfully it´s only been getting better since then. Today, I feel almost back to normal. I still have pain in my ankles, wrists, elbows, knees, and fingers, but nothing like I have experienced in the past few days. I still have to go to the hospital and find out the results of the tests that were done, which I am nervous about. Even though I speak Spanish well, I am not fluent. Even when I was at the hospital on Friday I had a bit of trouble with all the directions I was given, probably because I was focused mostly on how much pain I was in, but still. Blood test results in Spanish? I probably wouldn´t understand them in English anyway. Really, I just want to hear that everything is fine and that maybe I was just really exhausted or something. We will see.

Seriously though, it is really frustrating how often I am ill here. It makes me want to just jump on a plane and fly home. I am grateful though that seeing a doctor, getting a prescription, an xray, and blood tests only cost me $70. At home without insurance, that would have been 8 times more surely.

Happy Monday!

a work day in the life of

noreply@blogger.com (Emilee) — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 01:27:00 +0000

Beware: this is long.

How´s the job going you ask? Well, have a seat. I´ll tell you. Teaching is fun, up to a certain point. I think that point was today. Here´s what went down. I am still subbing at the local rich private school. The kids there, though horribly behaved, tried to bribe me today to stay and be their teacher. I told them they already have a teacher and one of them pulled $10 out of his pocket and begged me not to leave after this week. I told them frankly, they are too badly-behaved, would rather through halves of limes at each other or sleep than listen to me so I certainly don´t want to stay. Though seriously, I think I could handle it. The kids there all seem to like me even though they are terrible. It sounds like the are poorly behaved in every class regardless of the subject, where the teacher is from, or how long the teacher is going to be around. After 4 hours of obscenity and utter malarkey at Iberoamericano, I had a two hour break before I had to teach at my normal school. That´s when things really got out of hand. A 6 year old in my kids class asked me to go to the bathroom today and like any other time any small child asks to go to the bathroom, I told her she could. Besides, she is normally a good student, more advanced than all of the older kids in her class, and clings to me like I´m a direct relative. Well, 5 minutes later she arrive back to the class arm firmly held by the school inspector who proceeded to tell me that she saw this little girl running back to the school from a small market two blocks away. After that, she yelled at me and told me that no one is allowed to leave my classroom and that it would be my fault if something happened to one of them while crossing the street. First of all, how was I supposed to know this little girl was going to run down the stairs, out the building, down the street to the store and run back. You´d think that with 6 year olds running around, the outside of the school would be guarded at all times. There is no possible way I could have foreshadowed that this girl was lying to me. The age of reason is 8. How did she come up with this idea to lie to the teacher and run to the store. And no one leave the room during class for any reason? You, dear reader, try to sit with 15 six to eight year olds and see their reaction when you tell them they can´t go to the bathrom. Believe me, it´s not easy.This little pirates mutiny on a regular occassion by whispering to each other, picking up their backpacks, running as a herd out the swinging classroom door a half hour before class ends, eventually come back and do it again 15 minutes later. What part of class is over when the teacher says so and you have to obey her don´t they understand? Sounds like all of it.

Anyway, in my next class... same old same old. I have 25 nine to eleven year olds. They´re at the age where boys still won´t do partner activities with girls and most boys won´t do partner activities with the other boys. They´d rather fight. While helping a couple students, one left the room. I didn´t know. Again, the inspector brought him back. Apparently he left because he had a headache and it was loud in the room. No one can leave this class anymore either. Hearing 10 year olds complain about how they need water or have to go the bathroom is worse than little kids because they are more persistent i.e. have less respect. I love some of the kids in that class. They are smart, super sweet, and so interested in asking me questions about myself, the USA, when I´m going home, if I like Ecuador etc etc. Though it could be a deceptive time-wasting ploy to avoid learning anything. At least they hug me goodbye every day so who can be sure?

We´re watching a movie currently in my tween and also my teens class. The tweens class was interupted today because the inspector had to find out why a few of the 10 students in the class keep regularly skipping class. They came back from her with the attendance sheet, begged me to change their attendance record. I wouldn´t do it because if someone doesn´t come to class, I most certainly am not changing it so they don´t get in trouble. So the girls ran back to the inspector, talked to her for a bit, came back, handed me the attendance sheet and I noticed that magically, they hadn´t missed so many days.

My teens class, well I love them. They are a breath of fresh air to my otherwise suffocatingly long day (long only because I have been working twice as many hours this past week.) I can tell them they are my favorite, they tell me I´m great, and it´s all in all a great atmosphere. Sure a few of them are super chatty, but that´s to be expected. Of course they mock me because I can´t make a rolling r sound and I´m supposed to be able to speak fairly fluent spanish. I´d mock me too. They get quiet and work when I tell them too. It´s fantastic. I´d teach all teen classes if I could, but surely not all teens are as fantastic as the ones in my class.

In all serious though, I do really like teaching English. It´s definitely the best job I´ve ever had even though it is horrifically frustrating at times. I realize too that school children are the same everywhere and when I was younger, the kids in my class were the same. I, if you weren´t aware, was truely an ideal student. Even ask my parents ;) No, I´m not even kidding. After second grade, I was angelic.

Some days I miss home so badly I could cry. Some days I love that the sun shines so hot here, that I can see mountains in all directions, and that I am helping kids learn a possibly life changing skill. Things could definitely be tons worse. I could be working in some call center somewhere. ...ha.

hello again

noreply@blogger.com (Emilee) — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 21:12:00 +0000

Hello again. It´s been a while. I apologize for my lack of updating but after vacation last week I have been super busy this week teaching twice as much as normal. Whew! At least it´s Saturday and after working this morning, I have at least tomorrow off.

Anyway, vacation in Cuenca was pretty nice. The city itself it totally beautiful. Unfortunately though because we were there during holy week, a lot of things were closed so we weren´t able to see any museums or anything like that. After 4 days, I was ready to get back to Loja just because we had nothing left to see. Thankfully though Cuenca has a plethora of international resturants that aren´t available in Loja. We had sushi one night, I had an awesome salmon dish another night and so on and so forth. Delicious! I uploaded a bunch of pictures to Facebook from vacation and will put some on here or on google photos when I get another chance.

This past week was for the most part... exhausting. Teaching at Colegio Iberoamericano is tough because the students first of all, don´t pay attention in general and secondly, because I´m a substitute teacher, there are even worse. The kids themselves are pretty cool as far as I can tell, but they just aren´t so good at being diligent students. A couple people in the classes told me they wish I could stay and be there teacher after I finish this next week and explained that I really don´t want to stay just because no one behaves. The school campus is really cool though so it´s nice to be able to bring the classes outside and just hang out for a bit and get to know some of them. The teen boys are pretty much just inappropriate in their comments and whatnot, but it´s all in fun.

The weather is beautiful today. I washed my clothes on the roof earlier this afternoon and surely it´ll all pretty much dry by now because the sun is so hot. Lovely. I will say though that I´ll be glad to get back home where I can enjoy the luxury of washing my clothes and drying them whenever I want. I have brought my clothes to a luandromat here where it gets washed, dried, and folded for me which is nice but too costly to do regularly.

Happy Saturday!

8 weeks since i left home

noreply@blogger.com (Emilee) — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 16:03:00 +0000

I can´t believe it´s only been 8 weeks since I left home to come here. Oy vey.

In the mean time, here are a couple unclear pictures of the full moon from two nights ago. I just took them to show how the moon colored the clouds around it. Pretty bizarre, no?

I promise to post some more exciting things after the end of this weekend. Although next week I will be working my normal hours plus more again at Colegio Iberoamericano to cover someone who is going on vacation. ...hooray.

ramen noodles

noreply@blogger.com (Emilee) — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 00:51:00 +0000

In case you hadn´t heard, I found Ramen noodles in Loja. Things are much better now that I have Ramen noodles and I am not ill (for now, at least). I do apologize for not updating my blog very often, but it´s really due to the fact that I now just had a scheduled routine every day so I feel like there really isn´t much worth writing about.

This week, however, I am not only teaching my normal hours, but also at another school because one of the teachers is in Peru with her sister on vacation. The school I am teaching at this week is the most expensive private school in the city. It´s on the north side of Loja and on top of a pretty steep hill that I am glad I haven´t had to walk up. But anyway, the views of the mountains surround the valley from the school are a-ma-zing. Seriously beautiful. I am grateful though that this week is the exam week for the school so besides reviewing and giving test, I don´t have to teach at all, just babysit. There is a class of tween kids there (ranging from 10 to 16) and they are SO NAUGHTY. unbelievably so. I don´t remember any of my classmates being so bad when I was in middle school. I realize though I am just a substitute teacher, but they are awful and thankfully my last class with them was today. It´s a class of about 18 students, 15 boys and only 3 girls. The girls, of course, are well-behaved. One of the boys uses a mirror to try to look up their uniform skirts, which is totally inapprop. I yelled at him of course and I guess for some other reason, he almost got expelled from the school today. One of the girls brought her pet mouse to school and hid it in her sleeve all day except during English class. She asked me the other day if I liked mice and I said I do so I think that´s why she brought it. Another girl in the class said she wanted me to stay and didn´t want their regular teacher to come back, which I took as a very nice compliment. The other classes I´m subbing are fine. Little kids are super kid, 16 year old are cool and the 18 year olds who are just about to graduate seem to know more about English grammar terminology than I do. I can explain any part of English grammar in English or Spanish, but when it comes to knowing immediately what a grammar term is.... I have to think for a second. I took a grammar class so I know what all the terms are, but I haven´t been asked about any since I started teaching until this week... probably because I teach mostly level 1 classes and my level 4 class at Canadian House Center is filled with 10 delinquents who obviously should but unfortunately don´t know the difference between "is" and "are", that is, when to use either. Their lack of English ability more sad than it is annoying. "Be" is the first verb an English student is taught how to conjugate. You´d think that they´d know that by now.

Anyways, hope you are all doing well. I am planning on traveling with a couple of my roommates next Thursday because we don´t have class Thursday or Friday due to Holy Week. That should definitely give me something good to write about and nice pictures to post! Can´t wait.... I sure do hope I don´t get sick before we´re supposed ot go.

Peace-

hi

noreply@blogger.com (Emilee) — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 17:29:00 +0000

In case there is anything worrying about me, I am feeling A LOT better today.

Also, Happy St. Patrick´s Day!

That is all.

sheesh

noreply@blogger.com (Emilee) — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:44:00 +0000

Forget anything I wrote about going to Vilcabamba or Bob Marley tributes this past weekend. I spent Thursday night through this morning in bed (apart from teaching Friday), sick as a dog! I won´t go into specifics of symptoms because surely you don´t want to hear the gross details, but at the least, from what my mom says I had a strong case of gastroenteritis aka food poisoning. Waking up sore on Thursday morning was only the beginning. Thankfully, I´m feeling quite better today. I´m glad my mom is a nurse. She called me every day to check up on me and gave me advice, told me to eat only bread and other bland foods, which I have been doing.... I´m going to try to work so hopefully I can make it through without keeling over and eh hem, running out of the classroom to the bathroom. You get the picture. Anywho.... I missed out on going out for Charles´ birthday Thursday night, the Bob Marley tribute at Casa Tinku on Friday, work on Saturday morning, and the party that we hosted in our apartment on Saturday night. What a lousy weekend... I decided that if I don´t get 100% better or something goes wrong in the next few days, I´m just going to go home. It´s not worth it being here and getting sick all the time. Understandably most of it is food related, which is unavoidable and can happen at home, but definitely not to the scale and frequency that I´ve dealt with it here.

Hope you all had a good weekend.... and here´s to hoping I fully recuperate and don´t have to fly back home anytime too soon.

ugh

noreply@blogger.com (Emilee) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:48:00 +0000

I think that I am cursed. I get sick, feel better, something else happens, I get better, then I wake up with a sore throat and an aching body this morning. Has Ecuador cursed me? I am never constantly plagued with some sort of illness or symptoms while I´m at home. Maybe my immune system is really weak? Who knows...

I´m glad it´s Thursday already. This week is going kind of quickly, but the month of March on a whole seems to be crawling by at a snail´s pace. Hopefully this weekend is good. Today is my roommate Charles´s birthday so I think we´re throwing some kind of party on Saturday, but I don´t know the details and actually tomorrow night, there´s a Bob Marley tribute band playing at Casa Tinku (where I saw the Beatles tribute band) so that should be at least amusing. On Saturday, Annabel and I might to go Vilcabamba, but I am not positive about that.

Two new teachers arrived yesterday. Both from the US, Seattle and somewhere in Calfornia. The girl from Seattle is living in our apartment.

Anyway, things are well. I am ready though to get out of this city and see more of what Ecuador has to offer... 5 weeks in the same city is a long time.

Have a great day to whoever reads this.

march 8

noreply@blogger.com (Emilee) — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:43:00 +0000

Happy Monday! ...really, are mondays ever happy? Who gets excited about the start of their work week?... yuck! Anyways, I had a good weekend, stayed in on Friday and watched a movie. There are tons of DVD stores here that sell downloaded copies of DVDs for around $1.50, which is awesome because that´s cheaper than it costs to rent a DVD. Granted, they are burned copies, but they work just as well. It´s convenient.
We went out on Saturday for Cassie´s birthday, had a good time, and then I lounged around most of yesterday and watched another DVD.

Two of my classes have exams this week. I have done as much as I could to help prepare them so hopefully they all do okay...

Here are some more pictures. Click on them to make them larger.

monthaversary

noreply@blogger.com (Emilee) — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 17:58:00 +0000

Happy Loja One Monthaversary to myself (and also Annabel since we arrive here on the same day).
Annabel and I both agree that it´s hard to tell if the first month here has gone quickly or slowly since we both feel like we´ve been here for such a short amount of time, but that we´ve been away from our respective homes forever.

And PS, I am definitely coming home this July rather than staying here for a whole year. I won´t go into details about it here. :)

noreply@blogger.com (Emilee) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:25:00 +0000

In case you were wondering what my roommates look like. Annabel, Cassie, and Charles.

let it be

noreply@blogger.com (Emilee) — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 17:57:00 +0000

Pardon me for not updating in a while. It´s just that during school week, nothing fantastically exciting ever happens. I wake up in the morning, make breakfast, plan lessons, get lunch, and teach from 3 to 7PM. Then I come home, exhausted, read or watch a movie, make dinner, and go to sleep. At least I have a routine now. That´s comforting.

Last night we had a party. It was supposed to only be a get together of a few people before going out to Casa Tinku, which most of us did, but Charles stayed behind with another teacher who doesn´t live at our apartment to keep an eye on the place and the random Ecuadorians in it. We went to Casa Tinku because there was a Beatles tribute band playing and they were super good. The singer of the band was English so that was helpful to hear an English-speaking person singing. The rest of the band was seemingly Ecuadorian. It was good too because every time we go out and see live music I have no idea what the songs are and can´t sing along. It seemed that all the teachers that went to the bar to see the tribute band really enjoyed being able to sing the songs with the band. And it was really funny watching the locals sing the words they knew of the songs too. We stayed at Tinku until about 1:45 and then Annabel and I went home to find about 10 random guys sitting in our living room, all of our alcohol gone, and Charles passed out in his bed. We proceeded to kick everyone out with no problem whatsoever since they were all pretty nice guys and we just sitting around listening to music. However, after they left, we noticed that not only was all the alcohol we bought completely gone, but they had also eaten a bunch of our food while we were away including the jar of Nutella I bought. The nerve! And someone had eaten Charles´s hotdogs, which we realized after seeing of hot dog puke all over one of our bathrooms. What a situation.... it was pretty weird, but oh well, it could have been a lot worse for sure.

The weekend goes by way too quickly. Hope you all had a good one :)

some pictures of my apartment and view from the roof

noreply@blogger.com (Emilee) — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 19:08:00 +0000

49 stairs

noreply@blogger.com (Emilee) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 17:43:00 +0000

Well, moved into the new apartment last night. No one was expecting that we would actually move this weekend because on Saturday, we phoned Michelle and she said it was unlikely that we were moving. Then Sunday, Cassie, my Canadian roommate called Michelle´s husband Diego and he said "Why can´t you move today? I´ll be over to get you guys and your things in a half hour." A half hour to pack up our whole house? Talk about a whirlwind. Thankfully it was more like an hour. Then we drove one load of stuff to the new place. Annabel and I were dropped off with those things to start hauling them up 49 stairs to our apartment (yes, we counted the stairs). Once all the stuff was there, Annabel and I had taken about eight trips up the apartment I´d say. Walking up to the apartment is definitely good exercise. I haven´t really unpacked anything yet because my wardrobe and drawers are pretty dusty and I don´t have any hangers.... and no time to go out and buy stuff today so it´ll have to wait until tomorrow. The apartment, as a whole, it probably not as spectacular as I made it sound, but for Ecuadorian standards in terms of what I´ve seen here, it´s really nice. I will post some pictures as soon as I get a chance. The best part about the place is definitely the view from the roof. You can see all the mountains surrounding the valley and all the monuments in the city. It´s pretty beautiful. And even though I did kind of miss sleeping on the floor of Annabel´s room last night, haha, it was really great to wake up in a bed in my own room. A maintance man who works for Diego fixed my bathroom plumbing this morning too which is great because last night when I turned the faucet on to test it, the water went straight to the floor rather than through pipes because the pipe was literally severed in half. All is good now.

Anyway, here´s to another week of teaching. I am glad because two of my classes are being divided in half today (hopefully) which means it will be a lot easier on me. My kids class has a test tomorrow in which they have to fill in missing letters of the alphabet, unscramble sentences like "look at the board" and "sit down" and figure out what to fill in in the question How do __ spell ____ name?". I hope they all pass.... yikes. I know that some of them haven´t been very focused on English during class, rather walking around getting different colored pencils from other students and coloring in their book.

I saw five of my students around town yesterday while Annabel and I were walking to and from the Central Market that closed literally 5 minutes before we arrived (ugh...) and they were all ready excited to see me...hanging out of cars yelling ¨hi teacher!¨and whatnot. it was pretty cute.

Have a great day!